Chip on my shoulder

Recently, my friend 'Brina wrote a post about the tragic shooting of the Sikh worshipers in Wisconsin. She wrote on Facebook, as she was sharing it, that she had been hoping for a post that reflected the right response to the tragedy, one that encompassed her Christian beliefs. Finally, it occurred to her that she should write one. As a non-Christian, I was ecstatic to re-post it because it reflected the values of Christianity that I have always admired: Love God, and love one another and don't get all up into anything else until you're very sure you're doing both of those things perfectly.

Simultaneous to all of the shootings, Mars Landing, Olympics and everything else we've been responding to and absorbing, it's election season. Oy. I love how elections can shape our future and help us voice our needs and hopes. But at the same time, I hate how elections bring out the very worst in how people discuss difficult topics. We tend to find ourselves embroiled in conversations that turn into screaming matches and all-out verbal wars, acting as though we all need to line up on one of two sides to duke it out.

As I've discussed, I think we all lose out when an incredibly complex issue that has 42 sides gets reduced to a 2-sides only. I also note that when things are heated and everyone thinks their right to be heard is on the line (read: election season) people get meaner. We start saying snarky judgmental things in casual conversation like, "Well, I guess if you believe that __________ then it would make sense to think ______. But, I think . . . " Or, "No offense, but I think . . . " (Here's a quick tip: starting a sentence with "No offense" does not negate the thing you are about to say that would cause offense.)

This happens over dinner, in casual work conversations, and on Facebook.

This year, because the economy has been bad for several years, one of the big hot-button issues is unemployment and welfare. I've been treated to a couple of posts that have really troubled me on Facebook in the last week.

This one seems to suggest that people who are working and paying taxes should get more say than people who are not. Right on the heels of that post, I caught this one which seems to suggest that people collecting welfare/unemployment are more likely to support Obama in order to keep not working. Nice.

In the wake of these posts, much like my friend, I went looking for an article, blog, or something that would address what unemployment is meant to do, why it benefits our economy and society, and ways to express concern about those who may take advantage of or stretch the limits of the spirit and letter of these programs without lumping anyone and everyone who may be or may have "collected" into that group.

Nada. So, like my friend, I suppose I will have to write it.

I'll start here - I did what I was supposed to do. Moreover, I did it well. I went to college, and as a successful student, I then went on, after a brief hiatus, to graduate school. I have a B.A., M.A. and M.S. I worked hard both academically, and otherwise, to get those degrees. I read a lot, I wrote a lot, I presented and defended up the whazoo. Eventually, I also taught, researched, and jumped through those hoops. Because I was responsible for 9/10ths of the amount of post-high-school education I received, I also worked my arse off to pay for all of this. I ran a cafe, worked overnights at an Elder Hostel program, cleaned houses, house-sat, baby-sat, dog-sat and plant-sat. I worked an intensive work-study job during the "school year" and typically worked 2-3 jobs at a time in the summer. I ran offices, housed students, tutored, walked dogs, instructed karate, participated in medical experiments, and generally did anything I could do to make money, short of taking off my clothes.

Initials firmly ensconced after my name, I got a job and built a career and even got some promotions and offers of more.

I have skills. I can teach, develop curriculums, write, create presentations and trainings, public speak and present with the best of 'em, know a lot about education and small businesses, I can write a business plan, a project time-line and a press-release all in the same day and know how to project manage as well. I am a killer organizer. And I make award winning soups and can project manage a trip or dinner party like nobody's business.

So, let's be clear: I feel confused by my being unemployed for the better part of a year. And let's also be clear - it was never my PLAN to be sans career-type-job for this amount of time.

One more thing to be clear on: I really, truly, deeply, expected to be gainfully employed long before I ever had to go beyond filing the initial information such that I actually (gasp!) admitted I needed state-provided support and claimed my benefits.

The day I had to call and claim my first payment was well and truly bad. I paced around the house restless and unhappy. I flopped on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I looked at my phone with loathing. I sighed a lot. For hours.

I had come close to being employed twice in those first two months after being laid off and really thought I would escape needing to ever make that phone call. It made me angry and sad and miserably sick to my stomach to get out my paperwork and make that call. I almost didn't do it. I looked at my bank balance three times that day to convince myself it was really necessary.

But I did it because 10 years of school has a continuing price tag on it, and because my job ending doesn't mean my basic expenses ended and because, I reasoned, collecting this money meant being able to continue to look for a job in my field of expertise and not having to sponge off of someone in my family, which would necessitate a move, cost more money I didn't have, make me re-start my job search, and leave my landlord suddenly without a renter.

The thing to understand is that, as I have written, and as James Taylor sings, we are bound together. My unemployment doesn't exist in a vacuum such that it effects only me. It effects my family, my landlord, the trainer who lost me as a client, the stores I no longer shop at, the charities I no longer contribute to, and the doctor's offices I no longer visit, just off the top of my head. The things I can't afford to do are things that no longer go into my local economy. I don't necessarily believe that butterflies flapping their wings in Tokyo cause the weather to shift in Colorado, but I can tell you that collectively, when lots of butterflies stop flapping their wings, this change shows in an economy, and while Colorado isn't the most struggling economy, it isn't the best either.

I won't pretend that I chose paying my bills and being able to grocery shop as an altruistic gesture towards the state of Colorado. (I made that call because . . . my wounded pride isn't a good reason to shirk my responsibilities. ) But, I will say this: who does it help if I am UNABLE to do those things  suddenly? I have literally spent four days thinking of little else and really can't come up with a scenario where someone is positively effected by my suddenly not paying my bills.

Without an answer to that, I had to ask myself this: how would someone else like me deal with this situation? I have friends and loved ones who when they found themselves unemployed, were able to live off of severance and savings for some time, or had spouse who supported them. I did the former as long as I could, and I don't have the later. Restaurants, banks, clerical office positions, and retail won't hire me (I've tried) because I am "over-qualified." It's frustrating, but I also understand it - if I took those jobs it would be to fund my life long enough to continue job hunting in my field, and that means they would hire and lose someone rather than hiring and retaining a new employee.

I am lucky that I'm not trying to support children or dependents right now, so I don't mean to act as though I'm in the WORST POSSIBLE SITUATION. I'm not. The sky isn't falling. But, I also have to say that although I hateHateHATE calling the state of Colorado every two weeks to collect that "paycheck", I don't know what I would have done without that inflow into my bank account the last few months.

Now, it's true that I'm not chained to a desk 40 hours a week searching for a job. It's also true that job hunting is a different activity than it was even a few years ago - pounding the pavement often not only doesn't work, but has negative affects. I can go hand out resumes like candy, but that isn't necessarily going to get better results than working my network and having people who know people to walk resumes into employers and hiring managers for positions I'm interested in. And that approach takes time. I do this with gusto, in addition to applying for open positions online. And, yeah, sometimes I take a hike or go grocery shopping in the middle of the day and finish up my applications at night. But here's something: a lot of people in my community who DO work do these things too, and flex their work time around real-life. If I treat unemployment and job hunting as my occupation I am still in good stead with these behaviors. In point of fact, although the person who posted the pictures on Facebook that got me all riled up does not live in this community, I happen to know that he too flexes work time around his personal and family needs. So, if you see me out grocery shopping later, and it's still daylight hours, its probably worth considering that just like the worker who goes to his son's play or doctor's appointment during work hours, this doesn't mean I don't care about getting a job. It means that lots of life happens during daylight hours.

Some research on unemployment and job-finding rates also determined that I am in good company in terms of my several months of job hunting. This spring, research showed that for the first time, the number of college-educated unemployed persons topped that of non-college-educated and unemployed.  This means that the stereotype that many of us have (I know I was previously guilty of it . . . ) of the high-school or college drop-out who spent time bumming around and smoking weed with their friends and then got a job pouring concrete or whatever and then got laid off just isn't the picture of unemployment today. I have three degrees. I also have a friend who has a degree, experience in non-profit management and development as well as mediation and conflict resolution and has been unemployed for over a year. I have another friend who, with a Ph.D from an Ivy League University, collected unemployment for several months last year. People receiving this pittance aren't doing it because they're dumb and unmotivated, is what I'm saying.

Collecting unemployment requires not only that the person collecting certify that they are looking for work, available for work, and keeping a record of their search, but also that they lost their job through no fault of their own. The employer then has to communicate the same. What this means is that the apathetic jerk you may be imagining didn't go all Office Space on a printer, they didn't steal a stapler, embezzle money, or show up high to work. These are people, like me, who did their jobs, and did them well, but for financial or other reasons, their position was eliminated. It wasn't about the quality of their work, but about the longer-range planning and budgeting the organization they worked for had to do. In short, if you know someone who is collecting it might be worth it to revise your thought of them as being lazy now, or having been lazy when thy were working. These are, by and large, people who did good work, faithfully, and simply had the misfortune of working in positions that were downsized or for organizations that were struggling more than others.

How many of us are there? Well, that's an interesting question with a not-exact answer. The national unemployment rate fell to 8.1 in April of this year. This is good, no? Of course, having fewer people unemployed is good . . . on paper. But, the problem is there are government and statistical definitions that define "unemployed" as different from "jobless." This article talks about how 342,000 Americans actually just left the labor force and gave up this year. Although our unemployment rate fell, actually 169,000 MORE people were without-job in the first quarter of this year. That's great news, by the by, for someone like me who faced this economic and job-crunch crisis THIS YEAR. Ahhhhhhh. Worse: many companies practice unemployment discrimination and rule out resumes and cover letters from those who aren't working in a variety of ways. So, if by no fault of your own, you find yourself not working, you could really struggle to even get someone to look at you as an applicant. Which is ironic really, because I never could have launched this thorough of a job search before, when I was working 60+ hours a week on the road.

So, if there are no jobs out there or companies willing to consider you and you have looked faithfully for months and years, doesn't it feel reasonable to look at your other options? As this article says, "Many workers are leaving the labor force because of retirement or to collect Social Security disability checks. But an untold number have simply given up looking for work after long months or years of unemployment." Eeeeee. Skerry. The article goes on to quote an economist as saying, "If someone spends two years sending out resumes with almost no response, don't I give up or go back to school?" Umm, YES. It's been a scant seven months for me and since early retirement and disability aren't options for me, my other choices are school or start a family (which isn't a real choice, since I can't just run out and get knocked up given my medical issues and couldn't support a little one right now even if I could).

At some point, of course, unemployment benefits run out. I stumbled across an article that made me want to scream regarding this. This article lightly nudges the reader to consider that because people got jobs RIGHT after their exhaustion date (the time at which their unemployment insurance benefit runs out) there was at least some evidence to support the idea that as long as people are collecting they may be less motivated to job hunt and job-land. Ummm, hi. How many of those people took jobs that paid MUCH less than what they had been making when working, doing something that they never trained for and that does not position them to get jobs that will better match their expertise and former pay rates just because they needed to buy groceries? (I wonder also, how many people who are forced into that strategy also end up doing things that put more strain on communities and the economy like: moving back in with parents, claiming bankruptcy, etc.) I see no data on that. Cello!!

This is where the chip on my shoulder starts to show through - you may look down on me for not applying to work at grocery stores and gas stations and Targets that are hiring right now. I accept that this means, on some level, I am choosing the hunt and potential options over having any paycheck at all. But frankly, it would be better for everyone if I got a job that matched my work and education experience with a higher paycheck so I'm taking the gamble that I can find that. I'm not above cleaning houses or hotel rooms, or stocking shelves at Target (ahem! Look at the things I did to pay for school), and guess what? I will do my best to talk my over-qualified ass into those jobs if I still haven't found anything when my exhaustion date approaches. That doesn't mean it's the right choice today or that it makes me less worthy of unemployment benefits. Because for now, if I do that, I limit my ability to find the better job that allows me to build the kind of career that makes me a better contributing member of my community and economy. And, haven't I earned the opportunity to continue that search by being a working tax payer for 17 years and putting myself through school?

I guess what I want to ask people who are judging those who collect is this - imagine you worked for a company or organization for years. You got hired, got trained, and did your job well and even were asked to move up and take more responsibility. Then, suddenly, not because you did anything wrong, not because you failed to do your job or did it badly, your job was GONE. (If you want to add emphasis to this scenario, imagine it happens five days before Christmas) You only have so much severance and savings. And no spouse. And you took this job with the organization that is now eliminating your position in a far-away state where you don't have a huge professional or personal network. You have enough education to look over-qualified for the jobs you apply for outside of your field. Do you . . . not accept unemployment insurance on principle even though you are suddenly broke and without a good way to earn money? Do you write little slips of paper and send them in with your bills saying, "Sorry. I'm unemployed and don't agree with unemployment benefits?" Do you move into your mother's basement? How do you pay your bills then?

What I want to say is that I know, we all know, that there are people who manipulate these systems beyond all recognition of what they were intended to accomplish. But making anyone ashamed for losing their job through no fault of their own, or not being able to work, isn't a solution for them, you, me, our economy, or our frustrations.

This is me - my job evaporated. There were lots of factors that went into the company's decision to eliminate my position, but none of them had to do with any fault in how I performed tasks, completed projects, or discharged my professional responsibilities. Before that, I put myself through college and then grad school. That I did so without becoming skilled in the waitressing arts or learning how to shingle roofs means I can clean houses like nobody's business, and in an apocalypse (you know, where all the recently employed barristas disappear from their espresso-makers leaving someone like me who knows how to use one but hasn't done so since 1999 as the best choice) I could run a cafe and remember how to make a latte. But I have no recent, hire-able, hard skills like short-order cooking, pipe-snaking, or house-painting. I have a plethora of soft-skills like business planning and training and consulting. Where does this leave me? I can't run down the street and work at a restaurant or hire myself out to wield a band-saw. In fact, the first words out of my mouth after I got laid off were, "I just lost my job," but the second words were, "I don't have any hard skills. What does someone like me do in this situation?"

So, while people can say things about people who CAN work but don't overlook that I CAN work but with all of my degrees, and a workforce of college students or people with relevant and recent waitress/cleaning/office administrator/roof building/etc. experience competing, I CAN'T get hired to do any of those things.

Should I feel bad that I went to college and grad school and that my training and expertise aren't in food service or plumbing? If that is what those posts are saying, then I'd like to ask - why are we so hell bent in everyone graduating from high school and going off to college then? 

It is a hard fact that my degrees don't prepare or recommend me for taking whatever cleaning/retail/food service/driving/etc. job that pops up next, but it's not harder on anyone else than it is on me. So, making me feel like that is the equivalent of not being willing to work doesn't benefit the people who are angry about it, the economy, or me.

If someone offered me a job tomorrow that paid the same or more than my unemployment and used the skills I DO have, I would take it. Post-haste. I have spoken to many women in my mom's generation and before who said, "All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother." Well, all I ever wanted was to be an astronaut. But then, the next thing I wanted was only this: to be smart and self-sufficient enough to make an independent life for myself. That's why I worked my tail off to put myself through school. I don't see collecting as more desirable than working. But, I also don't see how taking a job I'm not capable of performing well, or one that doesn't pay my bills helps anyone. If I can't pay my bills and go bankrupt or end up evicted, don't I then put MORE strain on the economy by needing even MORE severe interventional services? If I take a job that I can't succeed at, don't I then get fired for incompetence? That would make it very hard to find a job I CAN succeed at, thus dumping me right back into the collect-or-lose-everything cycle.

I fail to see how this benefits my community, the taxpayers, or my eventual ability to once again join the workforce, and contribute to industry and economy in this country.

Facebook posts that point at people like me who aren't working and place shame and blame for other's taxes and income on us . . . well, I'd like to first note I DO pay taxes on this income. And further, more importantly, this is a "there but for the grace of God go I," experience. I watched family and loved ones go through this thinking, "whew! Glad it's not me." And now it IS me. So, this means, if you do the math and realize I didn't DO anything to "deserve" this it could be you too. An old adage about walking in other people's shoes before judging them comes to mind for me because I'm in those shoes now for much longer than has been comfortable.

If all of this means I have a chip on my shoulder when discussing unemployment or other benefits for non-workers, then so be it. I hope you all won't be offended (sarcasm) if I keep it there while I sit on my ass eating bon-bons and taking bubble-baths. It goes pretty well with the cozy lifestyle I've developed around an income that is less than HALF of what I made last year, job hunting like it IS my job, lying awake with a panic attack about what would happen to me if, during this time that I have no health benefits, I fell down the stairs, and you know, generally leading a pretty worry-free existence.

Kale, glorious kale!

Long ago, in a far away land, I went to college. When my mother drove me there . . . ooooooo. Well, she had spent about two hours between me standing in line to get my keys and then carrying things up to my third floor room. Then we ran into town to set up a bank account for me, run an errand, and dashed back to campus in time for the welcoming speeches for orientation. There we were surrounded by new, incoming Hanpshire-ites (who actually LIKE being called "Hampsters" - Hee, hee.), older students who were there to lead Orientation activities, and of course, staff and faculty. My mother spent most of THAT hour looking around, with her jaw visibly hanging open, at the students and incoming students and their distinctive images and appearance, shall we say. At the end of this she said, "I've always taught you not to talk to strangers, and now I just don't know what to tell you." (Ha! As an important note, when I graduated, my mom had come full circle on this. Hampsters don't walk across the graduation stage in cap and gowns; they wear what they want. And BOY DO THEY. My mom took three or four pictures of me, and about 37 of the fellow graduates saying, "I hope you don't mind, but for me it's a little like going to the circus!")

Hampshire College is a place that encourages and supports extreme individuality (I say that knowing I'm bringing to mind "extreme sports." It's intentional - Hampshire is a glorious, and extreme place. Worthy of another post unto itself . . .  oh yeah, I've been working on that post for nigh unto 3 months now.  .  . so stick a pin in that). It does this in terms of educational philosophy and curriculum, as well as in other ways. What's hilarious is that from pretty much the moment that I entered kindergarten I was very obviously, "that girl who's a little different" in my K-12 school experiences, and in comparison at Hampshire, I was something of a subversive because I was so "mainstream."  I found very quickly that the ways I had tested the boundaries and pushed the envelope were not so great as those of my new peers. I hadn't taken a year off to hike Europe, I had never dyed my hair or made my own clothing from natural fibers, I hadn't quit high school in favor of homeschooling myself so that I could do MORE, I hadn't published anything, and I had to ask someone what kale was! I went to a vegetarian potluck and was thrilled about the rice salad, the grilled corn and roasted red pepper salad, the stuffed zucchini, but, "what's this green stuff? Spinach?"

A few years later, I moved out of the dorms and into Hampshire's on-campus smaller setting housing (I hesitate to call them "apartments" because they are generally shared with 5-8 people. Which is a lot. But they have kitchens and living rooms. Which was what I was looking for at the time) and my "mod-mates" and I split a share of Hampshire's farm. I want to say that for a semester's worth of vegetable we each chipped in something like $30-40 dollars. The catch with farm shares is that you get whatever portion you get of whatever has been harvested. It's not like you go in and say, "I want tomatoes, garlic and zucchini this week." Early on we got a few strawberries, tomatoes, and things like broccoli, basil, and onions. Even fresh flowers one week! But once we got into November and December, the winter vegetables populated our share - sweet potatoes, other roots, and lots and lots of kale. I used to go pick up the share, take the kale, and just stick it gingerly in the fridge and hope fervently that the adorably young, hippie, dancing student we lived with would know what to do with it. Often times she picked up on the silent brain-wave from me and obliged.

But, I also was part of a group that met every Monday with a potluck dinner attached to our meeting. And so, finally, inevitably, it was an early December afternoon and I had been so busy finishing math assignments (another thing that branded me as subversively "normal" at Camp Hamp), planning my teaching, and writing a chapter of my thesis that I hadn't had time to plan what I would bring to the potluck. In the back of my mind I thought, "I'm sure that we have some corn chips and cheese . . . ??" No. I descended to the kitchen and found no crackers to put peanut butter on, no corn chips, no sweet potatoes I could quickly roast or mash, aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE. (I made this noise in my head A LOT that year as I balanced being engaged with work with teaching AND writing a thesis. Sometimes in excitement and other times in utter, flat-spin-esque PANIC.) Ok, self, what DO we have. Well, we have kale. A quick walk down the hall to knock on Sara-dancer-girl's door, "Umm, what can you tell me about kale."

I think she saw the anxiety in my face because I remember distinctly her pausing for a quick beat before saying, "Why don't you just steam it lightly and then borrow some tahini from me to serve with it for the Counselor Advocates." (I might not've known what all of our vegetables were when we got our weekly share portions, but one of the things I had done for our mod/flat was to create a calendar/board thingy so that we could communicate the 28 different directions we were all going in at all times and be sensitive to what was going on in each other's lives. Ahhhh Organization, my long-time companion.)

I did just this, and all of the vegans at my meeting DELIGHTED at my offering. I was kind of like, "Umm, ohhhh-kaaayyy." But here's why: first, I'm not a vegan. Second: I ADORE vegetables. I have always felt this way. Mushrooms, asparagus, salads, bring it on. My parents never had to negotiate with me to get me to eat my veggies. With only two exceptions: not a fan of beets. Aaaaaand, I don't like cooked cabbage. Well, kale is a form of cabbage.

Fast-forward many years, and here I am in Boulder. If ever there was a place MORE dedicated to local,  farmers-market, veggie-full eating than Hampshire, here it is. I am a long way from Kansas, as it were - in my first month living here alone I encountered kale 4 times. (And while I didn't think, "ewww" I also wasn't like, "Oh, I'm definitely getting THAT.")

But, the story doesn't end there. I have wonderful, entertaining, health-minded, whip-smart friends, and two that live in Jersey mentioned kale or cooked it in foods I was sharing with them. One of them is the "Ima" (mom) in my Jewish family, and when I returned to visit, she had kale in a soup for the start of the Shabat meal. I thought, "hmmm, kale. Perhaps I have judged you unfairly." Another is perhaps the most entertaining person I know in real life. She revels in making fun of stereotypes and can often be found discussing how, as a lesbian woman, she knows she is expected to eat kale and bang her tambourine with tabbouleh and quinoa flying out of it. (Biggest giggle of all.) She also posted a recipe for kale salad on FB.

Eureka!!

Simple, not cooked, fresh ingredients, come to meeeeeeeee. I made this salad last summer because I needed a break from lettuce and cucumber based salads and didn't want to cook vegetables. Very quickly, kale became something written in bold, all-caps on my grocery list each week. In fact, when I lost my job and started planning my budget down to the tiniest detail, I cut many things out of my grocery list, of course. But what was remarkable were the things I cut from my grocery list specifically IN ORDER TO SAVE KALE.

If you had told me that the year before, I would have bet money on the opposite result. But, here is the thing, despite all of the hype about super foods (we hear it hawked at us all the time. Acai! Pomegranites! Brussel Sprouts!) kale is pretty much a super-hero. It has a great anti-oxidant profile (of course) but it's also a green so it can stand in for lettuce or spinach, but pound for pound has massive amounts more of fiber. It also has high amounts of absorbed calcium, vitamin C, B6, potassium, and folic acid. (Read: my friend was right in that lesbians should eat kale, but not because they love women; instead, because they ARE women.) Kale is profiled as helping to prevent cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol and blood-pressure and osteoporosis (Psssst! The leading disease threats for women in the U.S. are cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Cello.) Most of us would have to eat a stir fry of vegetables to get all of that, and then something separate to get the eye-health promoting lutein and folic acid kale also has. See? Superstar.

But, since kale was a little intimidating for me, I had a knowing nod and smile when my good friend posted yesterday, "I'm never intimidated by any vegetable (or most food for that matter) but I bought kale at the grocery store this weekend and I'm ascared of it!" Kale is wonderful and amazing, but I too had some not great introductory experiences with it. One feels a little like they need to either MAKE themselves eat this power green, or like they need to be credentialed by the Food Network as an expert or something to unlock the tastiness of it.

So, I'm here to tell my friend (and I suppose all of you, also) that kale need not be feared. First, think of it as being tougher (as in, able to withstand more handling, cooking, etc. ) than lettuce, but milder than spinach. Thusly, it will seem like something you can add to pasta, soups, or stir fries much more easily in your head, instead of some elite vegetable that you place gently in your fridge and hope someone else eats (as I once did).  Secondly, unless you really LIKE steamed vegetables or tahini, let us give my former friend and roomate Sara-the-dancer her due for bailing me out of a jam, but don't steam it and eat with with tahini. You will feel like a vegan, and then you'll begin to worry that you need to BE vegan in order to appreciate kale. In my experience this is followed closely by a panic of, "If I'm a vegan, I can't eat cheese! If I can't eat cheese, then I can't have cheese-fries. Why would I ever give up cheese-fries for KALE? aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE! " So, no, no tahini. Don't set kale up as the enemy of bar food. That's not a winning strategy.

Next up, when buying kale, you march yourself bravely into the produce section, and don't worry about the people in hemp clothing! You have just as much right to that kale as them! Fourth, I prefer the flat-leaf or "dinosaur" kale, but whatever you get, it should be such a deep green it should almost have hues of blue and purple in it. And finally, kale is listed on the "dirty dozen" of produce that is high in pesticides. Here's the gig, as I see it: even if you're buying organic, we all need to acknowledge that labeling things as organic is a business, and there's big money in it. There's a list of CHEMICAL pesticides approved for use in certified organic farms, and they aren't necessarily less harmful than those used by non-organic farms. Buy local if you can, but whatever you do, let's all just agree that thoroughly washing our produce is something that's part of life now, mm-kay? (As a sidenote, I will note that like lettuce and spinach, your leafy, deep green-blue kale will last longer in your fridge if you don't wash it until you're using it and it's dry in it's little bag in your crisper drawer.)

Now, eat some yummy kale. (DO EEEEEEETTTT!)

Here are my recommendations:

Kale Salad (courtesy of the lovely and indomitable T-budd): Kale, grape tomatoes, pine nuts, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper (scallions, carrots, feta optional)

Cut the kale into thin ribbons, almost chiffonade. Then I cut those in half cross-wise so they are more fork-able. Cut your little tomatoes in halves and thirds. Add to bowl. Mix well and add pine nuts to taste. Squeeze a whole lemon over the salad (I use bottled juice in a pinch but an actual lemon makes a taste difference for me) and add about 1.5-3 tblsps of olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. (Add chopped scallion and/or shredded carrots and/or crumbled feta to change up this salad). I eat some version of this almost every week.

Kale Soup (courtesy of Allrecipes): Now, almost all of my winter soups go like this - oil, onions, whole spices or fresh ground spices, saute, then add either carrots or bell peppers and bay leaves, then add broth, beans or lentils, salt, other spices and herbs, boil, simmer. (I add other "secret" ingredients to dress up soups depending on which one I'm making. Beer, mustard, lemons, fresh rosemary, etc.) Kale can be added to any one of those soups. It can also be made in the recipe in this link with sausage, beans, potatoes, and hot peppers.

Kale chips: Kale, oil spray, mixed spices of your choosing, oven.

Admission - kale chips have horrified and worried me for some time, even after my kale-conversion. My cousin oven baked some this year and then tagged me in her FB post describing them as having dried out and turned to "salty dust." Ugh. I felt almost responsible since I had been touting my kale-love-affair on FB for many moons at that point. Also, store-bought kale chips are groddy and expensive. aiiiiiIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!

My awesome friend Lauren (I think she is a Hampster at heart, though she attended a different college) turned me around on this one just a couple of days ago.

Set oven to 375-400 degrees. Spray a baking tray lightly. Cut the spines out of your kale leaves, and lay the halves down on the tray. Spray them lightly. Sprinkle with you spice mix of choice (We used Savory Spices "Capitol Hill Blend" which has shallots, salt, pepper, chives and parsley in it but I could have used salt and lemon pepper, the pesto blend, or many others . . . and probably will begin experimenting!). Flip the leave halves over and repeat this process on the other side. Place in pre-heated oven for about 5-8 minutes, You want them to make a crunchy sound when you bight them but not be fall-apart-baked-to-death. After we reached minute five we began checking them each minute in order to hit just the right amount of bake-age but not go overboard.

Kale stir fry: vegetable oil, low sodium soy sauce, fresh ginger finely chopped, scallions, garlic, white pepper, meat of choice (we use cheap boneless chicken), kale leaves chopped coarsely, veggies of choice (the best blend so far have been mushrooms, bell peppers, and broccoli)

I marinate the chicken cubes in a bowl with a medium amount of vegetable oil and soy sauce with some white pepper and a sprinkle of chopped ginger, add oil to a skillet/wok and then quickly saute the ginger, garlic, and scallions. Then I add the protein, reserving the "sauce", and add vegetables according to how fast they cook (mushrooms last because they cook down faster, kale in the middle, things like carrots or broccoli at the beginning since they cook slower. ) Add sauce at the end, serve over rice noodles.

Things I plan to try:

Kale with pasta: pasta, kale leaves, garlic, tomatoes, feta, olive oil, pine nuts

Add some cut tomatoes and torn kale to cooked pasta (spirals? orrechiette?), lightly roast pine nuts in olive oil and sauteed garlic, add to pasta, sprinkle with feta.

Kale with apples: kale, green and tart apples, walnuts or almonds, balsamic vinegar.

Braise kale leaves and apples lightly, garnish with chopped nuts, add a splash of balsamic. YUM!

So, although this post is really a gift for my friend (be not ascared of kale, chicca! I overcame and transcended my first impressions and you can too!) I hope this will also help some of you embrace my new favorite green friend. Also (shameless pug), please share your kale recipes with me! 

All rolled together

Original Post: 7/26/12
Re-post due to blog breakage 8/2/12
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I have a dear, dear friend faced with a more than difficult situation in the pregnancy she fought so hard to attain. We've been discussing this as it has been unfolding. Tears, anger, denial, and cold, hard, clinical facts, all of it. And she still has good days and bad days with it. Several weeks ago she reported she was a"hot mess." Two days later she was fine and thinking very carefully about ways to both honor her sad news and celebrate the happy parts of her pregnancy, without one taking away from the other. The conversation we had was how she is happy, sad, disappointed, grieving, excited, angry, and grateful all at once. And we discussed how this is like LIFE. Nothing is ever completely easy, or completely dark and twisty. Nothing is ever all good or all bad. It's always all rolled together.

I'm trying to embrace this as I look at me and my life moving forward: my relationships, my future, my choices, my good and less than good days, and my job prospects. My therapist is always very keen to remind me that seeing things as black and white means not seeing all of the gray shades in the picture, and that means resigning myself to not seeing the whole picture. I'm occasionally keen to block out that message, or make a face when he says that, but I recognize the wisdom therein.

As you might imagine, I have varying levels of success with seeing things as good and bad together, easy and hard, red licorice and black licorice in the same bag. (After all, I am the organization queen.) For instance, today it worked out pretty well for me to get up at a not obscene hour, eat breakfast, make a lunch, go to my part-time gig for 4 hours, feel productive, and then mosey around Boulder for a couple of hours getting little bits of things done - capricious pedicure, my quest for Popsicle molds, finding some healthy snacks for the house (settled on strawberries and jalapeno cheese sticks for those who wonder), and dropping off a prescription.

I can look at that and feel like I did things that were meaningful out in the world, personally satisfying, and good for my homestead. This kind of balance was . . . well, I wish I could say rare, but it was actually non-existent when I was holding down a full-time job that included running a remote region by myself and being on the road more than I was in my office . . . which was a bit sad since my home WAS my office. This is to say, there are many things about being unemployed that are GREAT.

 . . . And of course, there are several that are less than great.

I heard myself say today to the business owner I was consulting with, "Listen, I get it. you aren't used to being the bad guy, and you really, really liked being the team player that everyone liked and it's hard not to be in that position because you are working for yourself and sometimes have to make decision that don't make everyone happy. But, I'm sure there wee things at [your job] that you didn't like. Whatever it was. Hours, people, certain tasks. This is like every job. there is always some part of your job that you'd really rather not do. Running your own business is a job, and so there are going to be parts you don't like. "

Don't you love it when you can be wise for OTHER people but not yourself? Right.

So, here's the thing: being unemployed is a JOB. For me it's a job that involves devoting the larger part of my "working hours" to job searching, applying, networking, and interviewing. But there are other tasks such as: tracking sales in order to stay in budget, grocery shopping and cooking on said budget, exercising more than before in order to relocate that balance in my life, balancing my scant opportunities to make money with the seeking of potential opportunities, finding creative outlets in my cooking, photography, and writing, and going to therapy at least once a month to make sure I am being appropriately supervised in this new job I find myself in.

Honestly, this isn't the worst job description I've ever signed on the dotted line for. (No, that would be the kid I babysat 4 days a week when I was 14. He refused to flush the toilet and threw things at people as well as launching into frequent tantrums.) Like any job there are going to be tough days, days I want to close the door on, disappointments and frustrations. But there are also days where I feel accomplished, hopeful, aligned with my principles and core values . . . in other words, days where I am doing exactly what I know I should be doing, and doing it well. I had those days with my last employer . . . days where I knew I had done work that mattered, days where I knew I had contributed positively. But I also had days where I felt like I was being asked to jump through hoops, backwards, while standing on my head just because that was someone else's idea of what getting things done looked like.

Nothing is all good or all bad, I suspect - it's often in how we look at it that smudges it dark or colors it good. As Shakespeare says, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet, if you're curious.)

I don't want to be preachy or speak for anyone else so I'll just talk about me (narcissism beats preachy by a nose!): often how grateful I am for what I have, how willing I am to admit hope and be optimistic, and how much faith I have that things are as they should be and that I am doing ENOUGH (or as Brene Brown points out that I AM enough, regardless of what I do or don't do, have or don't have) determines the relative goodness of something, not it's inherent properties. Doing laundry can be a boring chore, or a chance t make the bedroom smell like fabric softener and put clean sheets on the bed. Working can be a blessing or a necessity. My friend's dilemma and pregnancy can be an uncomfortable reminder that things don't work out the way we plan or a cause for celebration, and my continued quest for the right career opening can be stressful or an opportunity to value myself higher and hold out for something awesomely awesome.

On Monday, I was pretty miserable with this. I was mentally listing all of the things that discouraged and irritated me, and generally made me want to pull a blanket up over my head and give up. Witness:

• It's been 7 months, what's to say it won't be 7 more?
• I've had several near misses on actually landing job offers for positions I've interviewed for . . . this must mean I'm the weakest link.
• Not being employed means making health decisions sans health insurance
• I have enough money for food, bills, and the occasional trip to get frozen yogurt but not enough to do things like visit my peeps in Jersey, meet my bestie's (not new! It's been 8 months!) baby or go to my friend's wedding.
• I also miss my brother and my sister terribly
• Paychecks are nice . . . siiiiggghh
• I worry people will think less of me because everyone so profoundly expected me to land a job within weeks of applying and here we are in the second half of the year with no job in sight. Oy.
• I miss singing and performing and can't really afford expensive habits like that right now
• I'm weary o answering people's queries and invitations with a non-committal, "Umm, I'll have to see what's going on then because it's really hard to plan ahead right now . . . "
• I really miss working out with my trainer

That was Monday. Today I can see the value of what one friend refers to as my desert island time.

• I've had 7 months where I've been able to examine, and really plumb the depths of, what happiness looks like for me and how to create and attract that to my life.
• I've had some amazing almost job offers and opportunities to consider careers "outside the box" of things that I have aimed at before. I also know the not-hiring of me in those circumstances were about organizational rifts, not about me. I know I am interviewing well.
• I have been insanely healthy (not my usual thang so this is big) and so the hard health decisions have been few and far between
• I work from home all the time in this job. I can also work from the library, the coffee shop, and even within a lunch date at Panera while my friend is doing homework and we are both enjoying sandwiches. 
• I have enough to cover the basics, and after 7 months of not working, that is saying something. Re-learning how to budget strictly and make choices means I'm happier with what I DO have than I have been in a long time. this reminds me of when I was dirt poor in college (like, 2 jobs every semester, at least, and three in the summer, with babysitting and house sitting thrown on top) and said to a friend (who I am still proud to call friend!), "When I don't have money, it's typically not an issue because I just don't want as much. The problem is when I have more money than I planned and then want a lot of thing at once.
  
  The psychology of decision making is complex enough that I have several friends from grad school that have made careers from it. I'm wary of boiling it down to a pop psychology nugget but research in this field suggests I am not making this up and that there are many cases where having more to choose from leaves us less satisfied with the decisions we settle on.
• I have missed people and places and events that I regret and wish I didn't have to . . . but also more than ever, I have palpable evidence of how loved and surrounded by sincere caring and support I am. It's new for me to be at peace with that, to see myself in that light, to accept help and have some sense of being worthy of the love and attention. As Heinlein says, "this is a goodness.
  
  I am loved and I am lovable, and knowing it means I have some hint of a sketch of a blueprint of what love is and means to me.
• I'm learning that my attachment to plans are often a symptom of not feeling secure enough to be what I am, do what I need, and walk boldly. If I'm too steeped in a plan then it is worth at least taking my temperature and seeing if I'm suffering from some thinly veiled insecurity. And even if that's not the case it's still NECESSARY to remind myself that my plans don't actually get shit done (plans don't accomplish things! People do!) and also that planning is just another way of saying "expectation" and that expectation leads to attachment, and attachment leads to suffering.
• I took a walk in the middle of the day yesterday. It as the perfect time - early enough in the day to not be too hot, late enough in the morning to sidestep blood sugar issues. Working out when and how I want to means I'm more apt to do it because I'm not talking myself into stopping at the gym at 8pm as I'm driving home after a 14 hour day. 
• I have a sense of my identity outside of what I "do." I DO lots of things. I throw amazing tea parties for 5 year olds. I get babies to sleep and coax smiles out of them. I cook. I write. I hike. I organize offices. I lesson plan for tutoring. 
• I have enough peace of mind in my insufferable know-it-all head to have the space in my heart for a little faith. It's still work for me - I'm just not gifted in this realm. But, I believe in enough good in the world to know I believe in something. 
• I have enough time in almost every day for all of the ingredients of what happy looks like for me. Good and healthy food (mostly homecooked), doing something that makes a difference, connection with friends (emails, texts, Skypes, Panera dates, hiking, what have you . . . ),working out, time spent with my person, enough sleep, music, photography, laughter, processing time. This means . . . I got to watch every episode of Grey's Anatomy on time this spring, if I wanted to. It means I get to write and re-teach myself to read music. It means my laundry can be done on time . . . though it still often isn't.
• I know myself sososososo much better these days - flaws, my need to process in my own special way, sometimes less than well-contained ADD and all.
• I am letting go of the notion of PERFECTION as being equivalent to WORTHINESS. This is, shall we say, an ongoing project for me. (Ahem) And it probably always will be. I'd also bet all of the money I DON'T have that this will be a major theme in the blog moving forward . . .

On the numbers alone, the positive outweigh the negatives in this, my new job. (13 vs. 10!) But this is also what my brother calls, "comparing apples to NOT apples." The characteristics of the items on the top list isn't the same as those on the lower list. The top list is about convenience, societal norms, and boxing things up neatly. The lower list is about leading the life that's good for me . . . even, and sometimes especially, when it's neither convenient nor easy. It's about being healthy, and not just physically. It's about setting myself up for success beyond what looks good on a resume, and it's about what this blog set out to do, back in the day.

That list is about high-quality calories, maybe not fancy, but the kinds that don't leave room for empty ones.

I can't promise to never have another bad day with frustrations, low self-esteem, and taking things out on myself when it comes to the disappointing and downright discouraging cycle that is job applying. I can say I know there are always hard days at work, and pledging to see this as a job, and therefore neither all good nor all bad, is my goal.

Walking the walk

I saw my therapist today.

In all of the things am doing to try and keep my head above water, and stay healthy, seeing my therapist once a month is as important, if not more so, than the drugs I order from Canada in my uninsured place in life.

These days, I'm happier, healthier, more relaxed, and more . . . at peace with my core than I was. But, I also know this is new and I still need some supervision when it comes to establishing and maintaining this new friendship I have with being who I truly am.

We talked about a lot of things: the difference between opinions and judgement, what standing up for myself looks like and if it works for me, intuition and insight, boundaries, and current milestones for me. We talked about shame and guilt and vulnerability and connection, and how I am as a person when I feel my feelings on time and how patterns are helpful until they're not. I had some specific recent events to discuss with him, but mostly we were relating these things back to general understandings of where I am and what I sit on that couch to do - brainstorm new practices to help me be a better me more of the time.

He said this, that made me laugh and laugh and laugh. "You're soooooo open to change." Then I had to  tell him this story from my recent life. My person is in the process of moving in and everyone, including  my person, has been asking, "Isn't that hard?"  "How do you feel giving up your office?" "Does it feel weird to be sharing space?" "Is it a lot of changes?"

In order:

1. No. It has been almost completely natural. (Life would be harder if we had to share the important things - bathroom, closet, Netflix account. This house has two full bathrooms. The master bedroom closet is a bigger walk-in than my bedroom was for 4 years in NJ and we each have our own Netflix :-)
2. I am ELATED to have that room transformed. The office hasn't felt like it belonged to me for over a year, long before I got laid off and stopped using it as my office. Giving it away feels like the healthiest thing I could do. My bestest bestie offered earlier this year that short of peeing in the corners, it would be very hard to bring a different energy into that room. Having someone else turn it into THEIR space is the antidote to that.
3. Sometimes, as we are getting settled, I am noticing the edges and habits that might need to soften over time. But, mostly, we have a strong enough communication foundation and know enough about who each other REALLY is that it hasn't been weird
4. I embarked on cleaning out my closets and divesting myself of CRAP about a month ago. Not because of this, but because I needed to find a healthy way to let go of things that weren't needed and to make my load lighter should I need to move. This means there's a lot more space than there has ever been in this house and that makes the changes easier. So while what is on the shelves, as well as where the shelves are, may have changed, the only really significant changes I've noticed are: I no longer pee with the door open, there is a much nicer TV in my house, and I'm suddenly very aware of how outdated most of my technology was/is.

But, last night it occurred to me that while the office has changed substantially, and the living room reflects his presence, and the kitchen and dining room may never change substantially (cooking makes some people happy and excited and others anxious and worried. I am the former kind of person, my person is the later), the bedroom needed to be OURS (not just mine with an added dose of him). So, I mentioned that I wasn't sure our bedroom was set up ideally and was beginning to think about ways to rearrange the furniture. . . I asked my person to help me think of ways to change it for the better. After about five minutes of conversation he said, "Here, get up. Let's try it." And before I knew what was happening, the bed, night tables, chair, and bookshelves were moving, seeming to swirl around me, almost like a Disney movie where things come alive. He had an partial idea in his head, and working off of that started sliding things across the floor and saying things like, "Ummm, hmmm, maybe moving the light over will make sense," and "I'm not sure what goes in that corner now. " I stood against the wall and watched this, not knowing what to make of it. If I'm being honest, I was experiencing a weensie bit of panic.

Where were the measurements? Where was the list or drawing showing where everything would go? Oh my goodness, where was the PLAN? Aaaaaaaaaaaa!

He saw this and said, "Are you ok? You look like you're physically bracing yourself."

I replied, "Umm, you're moving very fast. I'm just staying out of the way. "

"Well, you wanted to think of different ways to arrange things. This is how I think. Is this really disturbing to you?"

On the one hand, of course, the answer was YES! On the other hand, there was part of me sitting deep inside my braced-self laughing and laughing saying, "Not only did you ask for this but real change for you never happens unless someone or something MAKES it happen. Look at this metaphor laid out right here, in your bedroom. Ha!"

It's no secret to my readers and my friends that I struggle with change. I can get very excited about change in idea form, But actually making changes to where I live, how I live, doing things like leaving (ahem, quitting) grad school, or leaving a job that makes me unhappy . . . well let's tally it up. I cried for a week when leaving my college to start grad school, because I was leaving my first home and a community where everyone knew and mostly respected me. I lived in the same apartment throughout grad school, and the year after, even though the management company was shady and the price tag exorbitant because the idea of packing my things in boxes and moving made me feel physically ill. I stayed in grad school a year longer than I had to get my masterses (plural Master's degrees - M.A. and M.S.) because . . . habit won out and going into the department was a habit even though, at that point, I had endured 3 years of advisor abuse. Most importantly, most wishy-washingly, most embarrassingly, I stayed in a job that no longer challenged or motivated me, or made me happy.

All of my excitement about change is worth nothing if I talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Or, as my brother often says - go big or go home.

So, when my therapist says I'm open to change, I have to fess up and admit that while I may be OPEN to change, that is vastly different to being good at it.

What I reported to him is close to the truth - I want things to change, and progress, otherwise I feel . . . numb. But sometimes I don't know how to do it. I posted a couple of months ago on FB "Christie Veitch wants everything to be different." A hilarious and whip-smart friend wrote, "I only want the things that are the same to be different. the things that are already different can stay the same."

The truth is, though, I want so much to be different (me, my family relationships, my job situation, the fact that no TV will ever again be as good as The West Wing . . . ). And yet, I still sometimes stand with my back to the wall and let it happen around me. I want change but I often don't make it happen. I'm skilled at putting things neatly in their place, ducks in a row, or, as my person said today, "being out in front" of what's coming.

Guess what, CV? Life doesn't work like that. Deal with it.

So, I am.

I have a friend who is hitch-hiking to a wedding this weekend, and therefore, not sure when he will get back. Just throwing himself to the mercy of what happens next. I have another friend who all in one year got married, bought a house, got a third dog (bringing the total poundage of her dogs-in-house-to over 300!) and got pregnant. I can look at my life and say, with honesty, I want everything to be different (imagine me . . . in Seattle. imagine me . . . somewhere where I could have a dog. imagine me . . . in a job that I loved. imagine me . . . back in school . . . maybe.) I have friends who have packed up a couple of suitcases and boxes and headed out for a new life that is 6000 miles away from where they are; but I am stubbornly in this house, seeking a job right here, because I want somehow to keep things same-ish while I'm changing.

Pema Chodron says:

ABANDON ANY HOPE OF FRUITION

“Fruition” implies that at some future time you will feel good. One of the most powerful Buddhist teachings is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you’re wanting yourself to get better, you won’t. As long as you are oriented toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.


This is about RIGHT NOW. Not how things could be, tomorrow, but how I am making today work, on how I am practicing presence today, and how I want things to be. Now.

These people, while their choices aren't the same as the ones in front of me,  are inspirations. Wedding you want to go to? Go! Time to get married, get some dogs, expand the family, and get a house - DO IT. Chance to move to Hawai'i or Vancouver? Don't stand against the wall while things move around you waiting to be pulled into it.

I'm realizing that boundaries are boundaries, but that even when we draw some lines to keep us safe, there's a lot of space in between for things to vary and move and grow and end and move on and change. It takes practice for me to remember, every day, that everything is impermanent and not mine to control. My plans and lists and pictures don't actually help me make change. What helps is when I ask for help. What helps is when I get what I ask for.

I need, sometimes, to be thrown in the deep end and reminded that I know full well how to swim.

If this year hasn't been 7 months of this exercise, then I don't know what is.

Or, in the words of the David Bowie:

 "I still don't know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild

A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

(Turn and face the strain)"

Change is disruptive. Always. Even when it's welcome, needed, or asked for. Disruption is having to think outside the box to make money and seek opportunities to do things that feel meaningful. Disruption is re-evaluating priorities. Disruption is my friends having babies and re-learning the true value of five minutes with two hands free or an hour of sleep. Disruption is waking up this morning and  having that moment of, "where is the alarm now?"

Disruptive isn't the same as destructive. I get what I ask for, sometimes, and at others, I get what I need. In this case, it's both.

Off the wall, CV, get off the wall.

-------------

p.s. it's important to note, that while my person was all about the swirling of furniture about me, after he had gotten things to where we could both see what his new plan looked like he gave me a solid hour or two to quietly absorb this, rearrange books and knick-knacks, and the like. And he also offered me verbal-gold stars as I moved things around in ways that made the room feel more balanced and spread out, which is what we were going for. It's now been two days, and I'm happy with the room like this. 

Flaws

Recently, I posted about romance and reality. Reality isn't always as pretty or clean-shaven or over-the-top emotional as a Meg Ryan movie, but it is honest. And honesty and romance have been irrevocably intertwined in my head. As I was doing some "field research" for the romance post (aka asking deep questions and sharing my thesis with my dear friends via skype) I found myself tearing up and getting the wobbly voice when I said, "I've just been lied to so much in my life by so many people . . . " A Facebook post my friend put up recently struck me as the simplest way I can state how profoundly important honesty is to me: The truth may hurt for a little while but a lie hurts forever.

I've, of course, written about honesty before. A couple of times at least. I value honesty in all the relationships I have, from the friend who tells me, "Umm, no, you can't put your hair clip like that. Only a good friend would say that to you though," to the sibling that says, "You're difficult but that's part of YOU." And I try to give as good as I get. To me, trust comes from saying what you mean, and then following up your words with actions.

I am lucky that I have some good examples of people I know finding ways to thread honesty, accountability and romance together, like my friends who, instead of traditional wedding vows, had a conversational set of promises they made to one another (in front of us). I also, in my research of what people promise each other, was sent this fabulous example of how honesty can meet humor, fun, and romance. (These vows are heartfelt, to be sure, and so true - not IF you get sick or IF you get angry but WHEN -  and genuinely loving. And let's be clear, I wish I could have zombies at any party or wedding celebration I might plan in the future.)

What strikes me is that honesty, like terror and charity, begins at home. For me, perhaps honesty trumps flashy shows of romance because there was such issue with it in my home. I come from a family that struggles with honesty - with one another, and with themselves. In my house this didn't always mean outright lying, but often just a lack of the whole story being conveyed about any number of things or willful ignoring of the skeletons in the closet . . . this is, after all, how it happens that I have a sister I didn't grow up with.  (In point of fact, I didn't know she existed until I was 21 and she was almost 30.) This is how people I lived with for years and love and share blood with ignored the obvious problems while deftly stepping over that lump in the rug barely concealing what they swept under it. Their stories aren't mine to tell, so I won't talk about what I see when I tentatively lift the rug up, but the important realization for me is that I don't just crave honesty. I worry over it.

I make it a deep and daily concern to check in with myself and try to take stock of my ability to be honest with others and myself because, I think, deep down, I am afraid that if I relax on that priority, I will find proverbial rugs and more than proverbial lumps swept under them. I live in a hardwood floor apartment for a reason, and I don't own any rugs other than bathmats, so, this would be alarming.

For me, honesty is, in huge part, about knowing one's self. It's hard to "speak from the heart" if you can't hear your own inner voice, and it's impossible to react and communicate honestly if you don't know how you feel. And for me, an important piece of that is trying, whenever possible, to trace backwards far enough to know WHY I feel that way. More often than not, my feelings come from fears, limiting beliefs, judgment, and insecurities. And more often than not, those fears and insecurities and weak spots in my tough-girl armor come from knowing how flawed I am.

The word flaw actually means: a feature that mars the perfection of something, defect, fault.

This always reminds me of craftsman looking at a piece of wood and rejecting it because of a knot too big to work into the chair or wall they aspire to make, or a big dark spot in the middle of a diamond. Something visible. Which is ironic and alarming, because I work so very hard to make sure my flaws are as invisible as possible. I want the world to see good hair days, no pimples, and certainly not the moments where I am fighting the tears over having to send an email that makes me judge myself by imagining how someone else will judge it. I want those things tucked under the floor boards (since I live sans rugs).

But, I've been brought up short by being unemployed, by going back to therapy, by realizing that people love me not because I am perfect but for other reasons, by seeing a moving TED talk about vulnerability and then reading the researcher's book, and realize now, the flaws in the wood make it richer and more interesting, and I've never cared for diamonds anyways.

So, in going back and re-reading Elisabeth Glibert's book, Committed (about marriage and misgivings and love and honesty and tradition and ways to buy into it without the bullshit . . . in my opinion, better than her more renowned Eat, Pray, Love ) I was reminded that something she and her beloved did before confirming they could marry (even with misgivings) was to present a list of their own flaws to one another and . . . double-check that they were ok with what they were signing up for. They were searingly honest. Witness:

1. I think very highly of my own opinion. I generally believe that I know best how everyone in the world should be living their lives - and you, most of all will be victim of this.

2. I require an amount of devotional attention that would have made Marie Antoinette blush.

3. I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy.  In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion.  You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart.  This will be unbelievably tedious.  I apologize in advance.

4. I am openly prideful, secretly judgmental, and cowardly in conflict.  All these things collude at times and turn me into a big, fat liar.

5. My most dishonorable fault of all:  Though it takes me a long while to get to this point, the moment I have decided that somebody is unforgivable, that person will very likely remain unforgiven for life--all too often cut off forever, without fair warning, explanation or another chance.

What made it ok for her and her partner to leap into this cesspool of uncertainty was BECAUSE they could share these lists of terribleness with each other and say afterwords, "I can work with that."

It sounds terribly unromantic (even less romantic than slaying a zombie head in a wedding ceremony in lieu of lighting a unity candle) but it is an incredibly loving act for another person to say, "I take all of you. Even the hard parts. Even when you make them sound really bad." It makes me wonder: how many of us are able to love ourselves that deeply, looking really deeply into the mirror and seeing every visible flaw, every humiliating or hurtful moment, everything under the rug and beyond? I don't. Do you?

How many people spend the time to know themselves that deeply and then say, "I love me anyways."

If I inventory my flaws, I sound really terrible to myself.

1. I talk too much, think too much, and generally cannot rest until I've analyzed the breath out of everything, everything, everything. Myself, how best to set up the laundry room shelves, my family, my goals, what shoes to buy, how to get $10 a week off my grocery list . . .  This data gathering and analytic machine does not rest and it is exhausting for every other human on the planet, but I can't stop.

2. I am a really judgmental person. I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. Generally, I don't make snap judgments (see above: data gathering) but when I've thought something over, I typically have a pretty good idea of what I think should or shouldn't happen, how to implement my plan, and why it will be awesome. My niece once asked me if my plans always work out and I answered, without missing a beat, "When my plans don't work it's almost always because someone has failed to follow them." I have tried, in recent years, to speak up promptly when I have no opinion because there are times I meet a topic where I genuinely don't care or haven't formed a thought on, and I want people to get a break from my constant assessments and perspectives. I've tried also to get better at making room for new data, to have my mind changed, and to hear others. I've tried most of all to recognize when judging others comes from judging myself (Almost always! SHOCKER!) but it remains true that I am the most outspoken, annoying, insufferable know-it-all most of you will ever meet.

3. I am what some people call stubborn or persistent. Those are far kinder words than I think apply. I am beyond determined, I am attached to willing things to be the way I need them to be. This often gets me stuck in a rut of patterns that aren't working for me, or what one friend charitably described as me being "dogged, at times." Yup, that's me.

4. I am very attached to my plans, my pride, and my independence. This means that I will jump in and help almost anyone, almost all of the time but will refuse to let my person take a shopping bag from me when he sincerely offers to carry it. I will run myself into the ground being a caretaker for others, all the while ignoring my own needs. It's extraordinarily unhealthy and detrimental to seeking balance and although I've addressed it with a vengeance this year, it will be a lifelong struggle for me to put myself first, ever, and not feel shame about it.

5. I'm deeply principled, and hold myself and others to painfully high standards. But mostly myself. When I can't meet them, as I've described, it's not a matter of failing and then picking myself back up. It's inevitable failure, then kicking myself while I'm down, beating myself up after the kicking, rolling around in the mud, and then expecting myself to write an essay about how I'll do better. This means that although I've been successful at many things I have no natural aptitude for, I'm not what you call resilient. I rebound . . . eventually, but it takes me an inordinately long time to pick myself up after a fall and because I'm so resistant to help (see above) taking a hand up doesn't even occur to me, even when it's offered.

6. I am tough, sassy, and strong. I have same-day surgeries without pain killers, travel like a champ, have almost no phobias, and generally act like I am unaffected by pain, injury, illness, and fatigue. Yet, I have incredibly thin skin. Even small accidental moments can hurt my feelings and sting years later. Having an unyieldingly killer memory does not help this cause.

7. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in letting go of anger and wounds, because otherwise you carry them with you and hurt yourself and others with them over and over. I believe in second chances. I often give third and fourth and fourteenth chances, because despite all of my toughness, independence, and judgment, I see the good in almost everyone. But, when someone has hurt me badly enough or often enough, when all trust or faith in their ability to be decent has been eroded, I am completely incapable, at that point, of the kind of forgiveness that leaves what happened in the past. (The memory thing doesn't help much here either.) It would be far kinder for EVERYONE to just stop earlier and close the door more gently on people that aren't good for me.

8. I have only felt pretty, smart, and appreciated all at the same time for three or four days of my entire life. This means, that when someone tells me I am attractive, I am suspicious they think I'm stupid. When someone praises my intellect, I wonder if that is code for them thinking I'm ugly, and that if they see both, I assume I'm unappreciated for these and any other good qualities. I am constantly undermining myself by playing old tapes in my head of being unworthy of real belonging.

9. I have a horrible, horrible habit of making fun of things I actually care about quite a lot because I can't quite bear to let people see me care that much and be that vulnerable and drop the sarcasm. I suspect this is offputting or at least tiring for many people.

10. As in introspective extrovert (or a very social introvert depending on which test I take and how I interpret questions as applying to my life ) I am often caught up in being what is needed by everyone else, and, as mentioned above, caretaking everyONE but myself. But, I also require an enormous amount of time and mental resources to process all of the data I'm gathering all of the time. Sometimes this all comes to a head and I find myself lying on the couch watching terrible re-runs or staring at the ceiling and not having the will to do anything for a couple of days at a time. At these times, I'm completely incapable of taking out the trash, doing my dishes, or meeting friends when we've made plans. This means my people get lots of attention from me when I am "on" and then suddenly, when the switch flips, I am suddenly 100% MIA. I know I hurt people this way.

11. There is almost nothing in my life that goes unprocessed (see number 1). But, I am accustomed to delaying emotional processing. This leaves me isolated, and often angry, and it puzzles and hurts people when something they thought nothing of resurfaces as an issue I'm still dealing with days, weeks, months later.

How can that list be compatible with being lovable? And yet, despite all of these things working against me, I have friends who call me family that I've had, respectively for 33 years, 17 years, 15 years, and 12 years. There must be something there. I reason it this way - they don't HAVE to see me at Thanksgiving and pretend to like me, they choose me over and over, and I them.

I saw a cartoon once that showed on the left pane, a field of flowers. Daisies, lilies, pretty, pretty flowers. Underneath it, it said, "How we see flowers" In the right hand pane, the same flowers, but with faces in their centers, and all of the faces had big ugly glasses, warts, crooked noses, pimples. Underneath that it said, "How flowers see themselves."

While we are staring in the mirror and side-stepping the lumps in the rug, we're all the while consumed with the pimples and the secret-keeping, which makes it impossible for us to see what is wonderful about us. We're burdened with the things that are less than awesome because we have to carry them around on our backs, and are always angling to stand in front of them so that no one can see what is behind our backs . . . like when we were children trying to smuggle cookies out of the cookie jar by keeping our hands tucked behind our backs. If we stood those things up in front of us and made peace with them, maybe we could see what was fun and useful and easy and memorable about us to others. If I loved my flaws, the bumps and knots in the wood, would I see the good things more easily?

Here's an interesting thing that happened as I was writing this post. I had assembled some of the pieces of this post last week, and sat down to write last night. I got about as far as I had hoped I would (up to the sentence, "If I loved my flaws the bumps and knots in the wood, would I see the good things more easily?") but knew I wasn't finished. So, I decided to sit down with Brene Brown's book. Her writing is just as captivating as her presentations are. I found myself laughing and empathizing as she shared her own struggles with imperfection and courage because they are all of our struggles - being too busy, trying to hard to fit in at the risk of missing real belonging, wanting to send angry emails to snarky people, etc. But I also found this quote:

"When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness - the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing and proving. Our sense of worthiness - that critically important piece that gives us access to love and belonging - lives inside of our story."

When I read this, I realized, if I had just dug into this book a month ago then I wouldn't have needed to spend the 2 hours it took me to pull the pieces of this post together and write all those paragraphs. Brene has already said it more articulately for me.

My story is one of hustling, as she says. Of trying to prove, to please, to make my worth and value known by showing others how useful I can be, how hard I will work for it, how much I am willing to do for others rather than just locating my worthY. When I do this, I attach my feeling of being good enough to external things. Accomplishments and work are the main culprits. And, so, when I look at it that way, being unemployed is my first opportunity to stand apart from what I do or who I am in service to others or my job title. It is, if I do it right, a chance to get very honest in a way that isn't hurtful to the person I'm looking at in the mirror, but instead embraces the knots in the wood so that I can clear a path to seeing how I am good enough, job, no job, and whatever else comes next.

Romance

As it turns out, I am broken in the romance department.

A good friend said to me today, "how could your job search not be depressing at this point? What's remarkable is that you seem to be doing so well in the rest of your life." And this is all true. (My job search is a little bit of a downer after 6 months. On the other hand, I'm doing really, really well.) One of the things that has changed most for me in the last 6 months of unemployment is to have really located my feelings and made peace with feeling them. On time. And to deal with them in pretty healthy ways. (As opposed to stuffing my feelings down, pretending to be fineFineFINE and then having to unpack that particular box. LATER. All alone. In unhealthy ways.)

I know, everyone else figured this out right around the time they were learning to tie their shoes, but this is big for me. So, having located my feelings, and knowing what I am feeling at any given moment, for maybe the first time in my adult life, it's surprising to me to discover I'm not much for romance.

Let me be clear. I am, indeed, a girl. I get pedicures and I even wear skirts on occasion. This is to say, the standard notions of romance don't totally escape me. Having someone tell me I'm pretty, wonderful, incredible, etc. is GREAT. I also like flowers. But since I've discovered various locations in my neighborhood where I can . . . relocate flowers from, I don't need anyone to bring me flowers. (Before you judge me, know this: for two years, I've had dead and dying bushes blocking the path to my house. This year, my complex landscaped everyone else's pathways, adding flowers to many, and ripped out my bushes. Path cleared, view into every window in house also fully cleared. They did not plant anything else. So . . . I figure, I am owed a few flowers in my every-curtain-closed-house every couple of weeks.) I like thoughtfulness, and snuggling. Yes indeedy. All girl over here.

But, I had a boyfriend who was all about the flowers and the compliments and the telling me how much he loved me . . . and then was completely unable to back it up with action, reliability, or . . . integrity. Ultimately, it felt worse and worse every time he brought me flowers or told me he loved me or told me how wonderful I was because . . . I knew that was his cover for all that he refused to address in himself, our relationship, and the ever widening gap in our communication. It was all motivated by making up for some basic relationship need that wasn't being met before that moment, or it was covering up some as of yet undiscovered other relationship sin. I've been lied to too many times to accept the flowers and compliments without wondering what they are REALLY about. I want honesty, and buckets of it.

So, to me, standard Hollywood romance has become . . . something that people do to distract from what's really going on. The things people say to make things look ok, for now. I don't want to take anything away from people who do sincerely nice things for someone they care about. I don't. (Especially since I genuinely enjoy being nice to people I care about. and not just people I'm dating.) But a lot of my experience with being brought flowers, told I'm perfect, or bought a nice dinner is that it comes from ulterior motives.

I want also to not think that honesty and romance are incompatible. But these days, romance to me is reality. I know there wil be good days and bad days, even if I'm happy in my relationship. I know romance is nice, but trust and communication are worth sooooo much more.

And I know that the idea that love makes everything ok is not only wrong, but dangerous. I had long talks while walking with another friend this spring. We see the same therapist and have some of the same pitfalls when it comes to insecurities and relationships and were prone to picking them over and examining them together in the backdrop of West Boulder with lattes in our hands. What I finally said to him was, "Dude, if you think about it, some of your worst, miserable, lonely, most doubt-filled insecure moments were when you were in love, because you were in love with someone and struggling with them. They were for me. Love is no guarantee that you will feel good."

I was reasoning my way through this last week, and heard myself say out loud, "Saying that being in love isn't the equivalent of 'everything is taken care of and happy' doesn't mean you can never be happy and in love, but it does stand as evidence that unhappiness and love can co-occur too which does prove that love and unending happiness are not the same thing."

For me, this isn't a pessimist's tale, but the reason to notice and appreciate and smile big when being with someone does make you happier and things are going smoothly.

It's also the reason why the last time I wrote marriage vows (to any new-comers, that's right! I've been engaged twice, but never married) I noted in them that promising forever seemed outsized, but that promising that for each day we were together I would go to bed with a plan to wake up the next day trying to be the best version of myself loving them again. I wrote:

"Plans are often the blueprint of what we want and hope for, but it's important that what I promise is something that I deliver, not just hope for. I want to be sure that what I pledge to you today is something you will believe and put your faith and trust in.

What I pledge to you is that every day I will try to support you and nurture the best in you, and that I trust in you to do the same for me. I say this knowing that our love for each other encompasses, understands, and forgives the things that are less than our best selves and hoping that we continue to believe in the strength of our relationship to seek what is mostworthy about each other and our together-ness, and move past the things that detract from that. 

I stand here choosing to be your wife, your partner, and a source of strength, safety, love, and compassion for you. I ask you to do the same for me. My pledge to you is that I would not choose another nor can I think of anyone more worthy to make this comittment to."

Now, roughly 5 minutes after I wrote these, the person I wrote them for made fun of marriage, commitment, and tried to dodge the whole conversation about our relationship while also asking me to move across the country for him and somehow still demanding credit for having thought about maybe-kinda-sorta proposing to me. So, you know, I was wrong about him being worthy of those promises. I've been wrong a lot in my life and this is ok because mistakes and being wrong aren't the same as regret.

As my person said to me recently, when people promise to be together forever, what they're really pledging is to be together until forever becomes impossible, "but that's not what you say in front of your friends and family because it doesn't sound romantic." I must not be very romantic then because, as you can plainly see, I wrote wedding vows that weren't about the forever that no one can promise (because there isn't any of us who can see that far). I also didn't marry either of the people I was engaged to because . . . well, I believe in marriage being a promise to love the person you're marrying enough to support them in being their best selves, and to be challenged to be your best self BY them. And neither of my fiances turned out to believe that or to be those people. I also believe marriages are relationships, not contracts, and that all relationships should be built on honesty and communication. And both of the people I was engaged to struggled with one or both of those things at those times in their lives. But most of all . . . they didn't love me for me. They loved me for what I could give them or who they thought I should be. And none of that boded well for making a big commitment, even if I was very conscientious and conservative about what I was committing to.

Here's the thing: I'm a hunter-gatherer when it comes to data. I pile it up. I go looking for it, and when I think I've amassed ENOUGH (whatever counts as enough) I analyze the crap out of it. The catch with data is sample size. For psych studies, there is a minimum number of data points that qualifies something as a well designed study. For mathematical reasons, most statistical tests require 33 independent data points as a minimum. In relationship terms is that 33 dates? 33 weeks? 33 years? No, it doesn't translate. I'd have to literally be able to see the future, or predict it with some strong probability in order to promise forever. But at 6 months into any relationship, as I'm off in my corner processing 6 months of data, if evidence warrants, I embark on the next 6 months and then that is unfolding. With more data. Which then needs to be analyzed. As that continues forward, well, then there's just more data being generated. Then, 6 more months . . . and you guessed it. MORE DATA. Y'all are smart readers so you see where this is headed.

So, this means . . . there will never be ENOUGH data to stop gathering, analyze, and make a prediction  solid enough to bet on. Or to stake a  promise of forever on.

I will always be scared about what happens next. About vulnerability. About my baggage. About my choices.

Moving ahead even though I'm scared . . . that's romance to me.

My friend (who's in jail), and his wife, going to counseling before he was sentenced so they could be at their strongest point before he had to be missing from day-to-day life is romance.

My dear friends who met and fell for each other while they were in other relationships forging ahead, that means something. Five years later they married and to me it was a show of bravery, of knowing that it was scary and uncertain, given that one of them had been in a marriage that dissolved, and that it was worth the leap anyways. It was a promise with teeth, flying in the face of knowing that for every amount of easy that it is to say the vows, it's three times as hard to make it stick. Them deciding that they would get up in front of their friends to exchange vows despite this country not recognizing their marriage, because it mattered to say it front of people, was love. Them deciding that doing it when they wanted to do it, how the wanted to do it trumped tradition or fanciness, and that a pizza party reception was just fine by them was almost as big a testament to their reasons for marrying as their solid "I wills" as their officiant asked, "Will you take _____ to be your wife? Will you share her joy and ease her burdens? Will you be honest with her, and be faithful to her?" after one of them experiencing the dissolution of a marriage, it moved me.

It was, of course, less heart-skippingly-lovely when they had to fight to have their marriage recognized for the purposes of one being covered by the other's benefits . . . but my thoughts about marriage rights and separation of church and state are another can of tuna.

Romance to me is about choice and action and and, yes, thoughtfulness and support. Consideration and communication. But, that looks the same to me whether the picture is painted in flowers and candy, or in things less Hollywood-worthy.

For me, the central idea here is, we can't always be clean shaven, in our hot jeans, wearing perfume. It's not real unless it's real. Flowers are nice, but someone who holds me after I've messed up dinner and wants me around after I've cried for apparently no good reason when discussing why I might or might not want to go back to school, that's priceless. The woman who loves my best friend from grad school even when she is over-worked and overwhelmed and wants nothing more than to lie on the carpet loves the real HER. The men in my life who married each other knew, deeply, exactly who each other are - good, bad, and ugly.

Romance is saying, "At any point we could discover there is no future, but there aren't deal breakers now so I want to move forward," and "this is scary, but I'd rather be scared with you than without you," and "I can work with that," but even more than that, "I think there is room for me to see this for what it is, to care for you still AND to support you to be the best version of yourself as often as possible." I was completely sappily moved by the Grey's anatomy non-wedding that the fabled Derek and Meredith performed for themselves on a post-it BECAUSE they talked about realities like getting old and senile, running away, giving up . . .

Love and happiness aren't the same thing, but I think there's a better chance of happiness in any relationship (friendship, siblings, family, romantic) if honesty and reality are present as much as possible. Reality is bad days, bad haircuts, hard conversations, simple pleasures, ratty t-shirts, calling yourself out, calling each other out, not always looking cool, forgetting things, being reminded of why you liked them, friendship, fights, growth, guards coming down, and things that can't ever be planned for. I know this from my longest relationships (none of which lasted more than 5 years) and NOT being married, so, while I know jack all about marriage, if this is true for 4+ years of non-marriage . . . then at least some of it has to be true about romance and marriage too, yes?

Ok, I'm done rambling about this for now and will just hope someone out there reading this knows more than me and will comment, otherwise I will remain, forever, romance-deficient.